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History - Medicine (what is medicine? (medieval england was not an easy…

- - - - illness was not uncommon. Malnutrition, particularly in times of famine, made people more likely to fall ill. A lack of scientific knowledge at this time meant that the causes of disease and illness were a mystery. The church used religion to answer the questions people had about illness and disease.
        
        ordinary people received most of their teaching from the church, as they did not receive any formal education. the majority of people at this time could not read or write. instead, they learned from the stories they heard, or the paintings they saw on the wall of their church.
- - - - However, classical texts like those of Galen continued to be very influential in the Middle Ages for three reasons: the influence of the Church, the importance of book learning and the lack of alternatives.
        Galen wrote that the body was clearly designed for a purpose and that the different parts of the body were meant to work together in balance, as first proposed by Hippocrates. Galen also believed in the idea of the soul. This theory fitted in very well with the ideas of the Church, who believed that God created man in his image, and so they promoted Galen's teachings and, by extension, those of Hippocrates.
        
        many people could not read in the middle ages. this meant that being widely read was a sign of intelligence. a good physician was considered to be one who had read many books, rather than one who had treated any patients. having read the work of Hippocrates and Galen was proof that a physician was worth the money he was being paid. the authority of these classical texts was so strong that people believed in them even when there was actual, physical evidence that suggested they were wrong.
        
        there was a lack of scientific evidence to support any other kind of theories of the cause of disease. dissections were mostly illegal, because the church taught that the body needed to be buried whole in order for the soul to go to heaven. very occasionally, physicians were able to dissect executed criminals, or criminals who has been sentenced to death by vivisection.
        when this happened, the physician would sit far away from the body, reading from the word of Galen, while the actual cutting and examining was done by a barber surgeon. this meant that Galen's ideas were preserved anything in the body that didn't agree with Galen's writings could be explained away, since the body was that of a criminal and therefore imperfect, and the physician himself never did any of the examinations.
        
        Miasma
        
        a miasma was bad air that was believed to be filled with harmful fumes. Hippocrates and Galen both wrote about mismata (which is the plural of miasma) and suggested that swamps, corpses and other rotting matter could transmit disease.
        smells and vapours like miasmata were also, unsurprisingly, associated with God. a clean and sweet - smelling home was a sign of spiritual cleanliness, and incense was burned it churches to purify the air. homes that smelled badly suggested sinfulness and corruption and, if a person was unwashed, other people would avoided lepers.
        
        although medieval physicians did not blame people's urine for making them ill, they did carefully examine the urine in order to make their diagnosis. it was thought to be the best ways to check on the balance of the humours inside the body. samples of a patient's urine could be sent to a physician, where it would be examined and compared with a urine chart.
        the physician would carefully check the colour, thickness, smell and even taste of the urine before making his diagnosis. this was seen as a very important part of medieval medicine.
        
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- - - - the Black Death was an outbreak of the bubonic plague. the bacteria were carried in the digestive system of fleas who arrived in england on rats carried by merchant ships. it was probably spread by flea bits, although some recent evidence suggests that it was also spread in the air. the main symptoms was buboes, which was swelling in the armpits